The upcoming article shall provide an overview of ways to earn cash without buying gold, especially for newbies. The linked Google sheets partially are set to “view only” because apparently you can’t protect certain cells anymore while allowing to edit others, so if you want to, you can simply download them e.g. as an Excel file. More hints and links to complete the article are of course very welcome.

Training Centers

The single best way to boost not only your strength but also your income are the training centers. By earning super soldier (SS) medals every 250 strength, you get 5 gold worth nearly 1000 country currency (cc). The following table shows your daily profit when using only the free training center, depending on its quality (Q). (An upgrade Q1->Q2 costs 20 gold, Q2->Q3 is 50 and Q3->Q4 is 100 gold. Those ugprade fees are discounted 45% every now and then, make sure to NEVER upgrade without such an upgrade promo or you’re wasting your money!)

The most profitable training ground constellation is to use the free and the 0.19g center, both on Q4. By doing so, you earn nearly half a gold (0.446g) each day - in addition to the strength boost, of course. Following this, the most important task for a newbie is to get that free training center to Q4, invest all your savings into this during the upgrade promos. After having accomplished that, your priority should be to upgrade the 0.19g one, however note that your gold revenue from training will decrease until you reach Q4 for the maximum profit. As soon as you approach the other two training facilities, the training contracts might become interesting: With all centers on Q4, combined with a 90% training contract, your training is virtually cost neutral. You can have a look at the costs or revenues, whether a contract is worth it, strength gains and so on using those two calculators:

For working, you get some cash - some of you might already have experienced this phenomenon. As in RL, the right choice of your working place is quite important. Many military units (MUs) provide some kind of commune system, with members working for a minimum wage but receiving food or weapon compensations in exchange. If you work on the “normal” job market though, pick a country with a high wage, since wages vary considerably in the new world. To apply for a job, you need to be located in the employer’s country, which means you maybe need to move. For example, there’s a good chance of finding a decent salary in Poland, since their production bonuses are maxed out most of the time and thus the employers can pay a better salary.

Q1 houses

In the context of working, it is also interesting to have a look at Q1 houses, the reason for this being the overtime feature. For each active house, you receive one overtime point, as soon as you collected 24 of those, you can work overtime once. Since a house lasts for exactly a week (168 hours), it also grants 168 overtime points and thus the ability to work seven times more. So, simply divide the price of the cheapest Q1 house (Poland is probably a good choice again) by 7 and see if it’s below your (net) salary, if it is, you’ll make some profit using the house. Have an example: Right now the Polish net salary is ~45cc with a Q1 house costing 245cc. Seven additional wages sum up to a total of 315cc - which results in a profit of 70cc each week. On top of that, you also boosted your health limit by 50!

RM companies

Another way of earning cash are raw material companies (for weapons: WRM, for food: FRM, for houses: HRM). Note that in HRM companies, in contrast to the other two types, you CAN’T work as a manager but only use employees to produce.* There are 5 different companies per raw material - which one is the best choice depends on your time horizon as well as the gold price (how many cc you need to pay for 1 gold). This chart shows the profit developments of the different FRM companies in the course of time. Assumptions are FRM = 0.02cc, food bonus 40%, gold = 200cc, daily work tax of ~0.78cc (tax rate of 3% combined with an average salary of ~26cc).

As you can see, the 10g firm (Q3) yields profit fastest after subtracting costs, roughly 2 years after building. Due to the much higher initial investment for a Q5 raw company (35g), it takes a lot longer to actually get money from it (1125 days), but since its production output is by far the highest, from day 1431 after building it yields the highest profit in comparison to any other raw company. Building a Q1, Q2 or Q4 doesn’t really make any sense at current gold prices.

To sum it up, you can invest 10g once for a fish company and your following daily profit is just enough for getting an additional Q7 weapon every 2 days. However, note that producing RM requires quite a bit of storage if you can’t get it sold within a reasonable period of time - maybe in the end you need to lower your selling price to empty the storage, which will of course make your profit shrink harshly. (Storage place can either be bought or won in the weekly challenges).

The calculations above are the same for WRM, with changed variables of course. If you plan to just sell your produced RM, make sure to do the math checking which type of company makes you most cash. Especially due to the very long-term nature of the investment, though, it’s nearly impossible to predict price developments in the future.

* This means that anything but a granite quarry (Q5) doesn’t make sense - you can only produce with workers, so you can’t compete with people having a higher HRM output per company using the same amount of employees.

The three subtypes of processing companies are food, weapons and houses. As in raw material companies, you can only produce with workers in the house companies. The much lower amount of storage needed is tempting, especially for weapons, where you need 10-200 WRM for a single weapon. But: There is a high risk of producing at a loss - you are processing RMs you could have sold and you’re paying taxes (work tax + maybe VAT). This risk is outstandingly high with low-Q companies.

An example: A Q1 weapon costs 0.05cc in eGermany. To produce one such weapon, you need 10 WRM for 0.02 each, also for working in the company you pay another 0.78cc in work taxes. (0.78cc/12 to be more precise, since a weapons company regularly produces 12 weapons with normal eGerman bonuses). In short, you have a considerable loss of (0.05-(0.02*10+0.78/12)) = ~0.215cc per weapon produced. (And that is leaving out VATs - if you sell for 0.05, with the current VAT rate of 15%, you only get 0.05*(100/115) = 0.043cc).

It is essential to do the math before building or upgrading (there are 45% discounts on that every now and then, too) a processing company, otherwise you’ll probably end up with losses.

Same story as with processing companies: It’s probably not worth it, especially for newbies. Do. The. Math. Chances are the goods your workers produce aren’t even enough for paying their salaries. Most of the time only higher-Q companies (esp. Q7 weapons) are profitable.

Fighting & Medals

Even during fighting, you can earn your living. The easiest way should be fighting for a Combat Order (CO).

Combat Orders

A MU’s commander can set a CO for a specific battle, setting a total budget, a treshold (most of the time 51-52%) and a price per million influence. If you accepted the CO and the battle is below the selected treshold, you get paid for every single kill in the battle! Depending on your strength and weapon prices, you might even end up with a profit (earning more by CO than paying for food & weapons). In either case, it’s cheaper than hitting without a CO. Read up more about COs in the Wiki.

One of the most popular ways of wasting money - don’t do it. You just don’t get enough for the rather high price, if you really insist on having to deal more damage, just wait 2 hours instead of spending 3.5g (during the 30% discount, normally 5g) for a double EB.

True Patriot Medal (TP)

Anytime you fight for your citizenship country, you are working towards a TP medal. The first one is awarded for 100,000 influence, the upcoming ones’ requirements can be found in detail in the Wiki. The medal is also very interesting for older and stronger players, since with a higher Q7 hit (and maybe a damage booster) you can reach the 100 millions influence for the later medals quite easily.

Battle Hero Medal (BH)

The player having dealt the highest amount of influence in a battle is awarded the BH medal plus some gold - 2, 3, 4 or 5, depending on the player’s division. Chasing BHs is rather costly since most of the time you’ll end up burning EBs, bazookas, bombs and boosters, so there is a huge potential for failure and frustration. If you have the resources plus a bit of luck, though, it can also provide a lot of fun. Ideally, you combine it with TP damage to increase the profit even more.

Freedom Fighter Medal (FF)

The FF medal is the latest medal and awarded for being part of successful resistance movements. There is a repeating cycle of 24 medals, starting with 25 kills in 3 successful 3 RWs and ending with 75 kills in 10 RWs (see Wiki). Especially the first medals of the cycle are a good way for newbies to boost their economic situation.

A medal which may give you a loss or profit, depending on the gold price. For paying 1000cc you get one of ten RW starters’ slots - if the region is freed in the end, you receive the medal plus 5 gold. With a gold price of ~190cc per gold, the medal is a losing deal at this point, but with the gold price increasing, it might become interesting again. Attentiveness will pay off - if you just randomly support a RW, chances are it will fail and you’re left with nothing but a loss of 1000cc.

Society Builder Medal (SB)

Maybe the potentially most attractive source of income is referring friends. (Note that playing more than one account (multi-accounting) is strictly forbidden and will result in bans of all accounts involved.) The SB medal (5g) is awarded for having referred 10 friends who survived at least until level 20. More importantly, you receive 10% of every bit of gold your friends receive, either from medals, levelups or purchases. (This means that if 10 friends survive until level 20 you get an additional 19g for their levelups!) In short, if you happen to know people who might enjoy eRepublik, make sure to send them your reflink (http://www.erepublik...ournamegoeshere)!

Other medals like the President’s medal or the Top Fighter (TF) medal aren’t really a realistic source of income, especially for newbies.

Save weapons/food

Instead of earning cash you can also try spending less - in general, it makes sense to stay in the lower divisions for as long as possible (easier BHs, higher COs, ..), so don’t try to maximize your energy usage at any cost.

Trading / speculating

If you have a bit of cash in your pockets, you can use the monetary market (MM) as a further way of generating an income. First, there’s the classic speculation - buy low, sell high. The risk is rather high and I wouldn’t recommend it to younger and rather inexperienced players, but there’s also a risk-free way of using the MM, let’s call it passive trading. You are exploiting the exchange rates’ (cc/gold, gold/cc) variation: With a current gold price of roughly 190cc/g, the g/cc rate is 0.006 (since there are no more decimals allowed). So, you put up 1667cc for 0.006cc/g on the market and wait until it gets sold for 9.996g (a citizen can’t receive more than 10g daily from the MM or by donations). Now you need to switch the side and sell those 9.996g for ~190cc each - you’ll receive nearly 1900cc, netting a profit of ~233cc. Profit opportunittes of course heavily vary depending on the exchange rates.

The product markets (RM or finished goods) also provide speculation opportunities. Depending on where you sell, you might have to pay VATs and/or import taxes (if you don’t sell in your citizenship country), so it’s really hard to exploit smaller changes on the markets. However, as you maybe observed during the latest Epic Warfare (eDay 2527-2533), there are special events massively boosting food and/or weapon prices every now and then. If you hoarded a bit earlier, you can cash in during such an event!

Concluding remarks

As you maybe realized while reading, it’s quite hard to make a profit without any kind of investment. That’s why older players who maybe took one or two right decisions in the past have it easier now, but also as a younger player, there’s plenty of ways to earn some cash without having to spend RL cash on the game. There are many varying variables capable of unsuspectedly killing your entire nicely planned investments, but your decisions should at least be right when you take them.

In general, it definitely is essential to think, plan and do the math before taking a major decision, and it also most certainly won’t hurt to maybe ask a more experienced player!

I have been playing for over 3 years, as a casual, just logging in everyday to do my orders and training,

I never took into the math, I had over 500 gold on my account, and was looking for ways to make more, and with that training technique, I applaud you, I never thought twice about it! So thank you for that!